Eyes of Fire by Heather Graham Page B

damned well he has to be working for someone.”
    â€œMaybe he’s just after the truth,” she murmured.
    â€œWhat?”
    She shook her head. “Nothing, really…”
    Liam was silent, thoughtful. “You still haven’t learned anything from Samantha?”
    â€œSamantha doesn’t know anything.”
    She heard him sigh. He was getting insistent. She bit her lower lip. She could just leave now. Leave Liam. Surely he would let her go….
    And maybe not. Maybe what she did or didn’t know, could or couldn’t remember, mattered to him far more than she imagined. Well, almost everything else she’d ever done in life had been a mistake, why not this, too? Liam wasn’t bad. He never pretended he didn’t appreciate other women, nor did he ever pretend to love her. He was blunt, curt, rude, temperamental, aggressive. He could be violent—he was one of those men who believed a man had a right to knock a woman around a bit if she needed it—but never to the extent that he really hurt her.
    And maybe she’d taken so many knocks in life that she’d grown to expect a few now and then.
    Still, Liam had a strange honesty about him, at least where she was concerned, and she felt that if nothing else, at least she was playing the game with a full deck of cards. In that particular sense, she was getting more from him than he was getting from her.
    She shivered suddenly, fiercely. No one could ever know the whole truth. No one. Partly it just hurt too damned badly. She couldn’t bear to have the scar ripped open.
    Not for Liam. Not for anyone.
    â€œSamantha knows something,” Liam insisted.
    â€œShe knows how to dive, and she knows the ship exists somewhere, and that’s about it,” Jerry insisted.
    â€œYou’re wrong. She lived with her father. She listened to him day in and day out. She knows something.”
    â€œShe doesn’t even like to talk about the Beldona. ” Jerry hesitated, then shook her head. “Don’t you understand? She loved her father. He died because of that damn ship.”
    â€œHe disappeared.”
    â€œHe’s dead.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI don’t know, I—I just don’t believe he would ever have left his daughter intentionally.”
    Liam leaned over her. “You’re alive,” he said softly.
    She shook her head, moistening her lips. “Justin Carlyle has to be dead. And you can’t blame Sam for not wanting to talk about the ship.”
    â€œThat’s why she needs some gentle encouragement.”
    â€œWell, I’ve been encouraging her just as gently as I can,” Jerry said. She rose, anxious to get away from him to recover her calm. She left him on the porch and walked on into the cottage. She headed straight for the bath, took off her makeup with petroleum jelly, then washed her face with cold cream. She’d performed the same acts religiously for years and believed with good reason that the very simplicity of her regime had kept her skin young and supple all these years.
    She never told anyone quite how many.
    She slipped into the slinky red nightgown hanging on the door hook. For a moment she studied her face in the mirror and wondered how she’d managed to make such a mess of things. Wondering wouldn’t help. She’d already done it.
    She left the bedroom. Liam was already in bed, in his boxers, staring up at the ceiling, his hands folded behind his head. He was in excellent shape—she had to hand him that.
    She slid in beside him, her back to him.
    â€œTired?” he asked her.
    â€œMmm.”
    â€œLounging around can be exhausting.”
    â€œThe sun is hot. I spent the day at the pool.”
    â€œYou’re going to have to dive. Soon,” he told her.
    â€œAll right, soon.”
    â€œYou don’t understand the stakes,” he told her.
    â€œNo,” she said quietly, “ you don’t